


Kingdom of Rust

by glackedandmullered



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: M/M, future dystopian kind of world, ridiculously underdeveloped world
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-29 08:37:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3889684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glackedandmullered/pseuds/glackedandmullered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world has gone to shit and Geoff just wants to keep surviving. Maybe he finds someone along the way that he wouldn’t mind seeing more than once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yep this is a reupload of the fic from a few days ago of the same name. I have taken it, added bits, changed bits, and I hope it came out a little better for it. 
> 
> There's still not planned schedule for uploading, just whenever I get in the mood for it :)

Alast is a place ravaged by war. Most places were ravaged these days but Alast had been hit worse than most.

The streets are nothing but rubble, collapsed buildings paving a rocky way through the city. Not that anyone ever really tries to pass through, there are a number of other ways to get from A to B in America without setting foot in Alast and most sane people would take those routes every time.

Geoff Ramsey is neither most people nor wholly sane.

He’s a photographer. Hobbyist not professional, more comfortable looking at the world through a lens than taking in the sights with his own eyes, but a photographer nonetheless. And cities like Alast were goldmines for excellent shots.  The way the sun hits the once great Mayor’s hall can rival any artwork, the glass in the cathedral windows shattered but scattered beautifully in shimmering patterns across the footpaths and graveyard. The bodies beneath the soil know nothing of the hell that the world has become, and Geoff finds that more fascinating than anything else.

If it hadn’t been for the bar, he would have left the city scot free with a handful of pictures he could pin up on the walls of his 1972 Volkswagen camper that had definitely seen better days, but reliably took him anywhere he needed to go. (His friends had laughed when he’d bought it, “It’s a two hundred year old car,” they said, surprised and chuckling, “It’s gonna fall apart after a week.” But it didn’t, and he revelled in their shock when he kept returning, unscathed, still seated in the worn down front seat.) You could barely see the windows for photographs these days, layer upon layer of locations across the whole country soothing Geoff to sleep at night.

The bar had been a mistake, the drinks (a lot of them) had been mistakes, going back to his car with a man dressed in skinny jeans and a plain white shirt with just one too many buttons undone, had definitely been a mistake.

In the heat of the moment he seems to forget the important things, the little details he should certainly try to remember in future. Maybe he should take a picture of himself, holding a sign that reads _Just don’t._ Unfortunately he has yet to make that sign, or take that picture so he still forgets.

He forgets that the van has a single flat mattress that is all spiky springs poking through the fabric and moth eaten hems. He forgets that some of the photos lining the walls are of restricted areas and private land, not that any normal person would be able to tell, but if Geoff was different he couldn’t be the only one.

Above all else he forgets about the black mark adorning his right shoulder blade. It’s a part of him, he doesn’t need to remember it, and if just thinking about it could rid him of it then he decides he would hurt himself with how fast his brain would jump to work on that.

The mark isn’t a stain, it’s a tattoo that hurt just as much as any tattoo to ink into his skin (and he’d become quite accustomed to the feeling of the gun driving needles into the upper layer of his skin over the years) But at 6 years old it was a pain that had stuck with him, things tend to at that age. It had been nothing like anything he had ever experienced before, sharp, stabbing pain driving across his shoulder, permanently marking him with the identifier that he would come to both love and hate for the entire world to see.

“It’s necessary,” his mother says, mopping up the droplets of blood that leak down his back. “It shows everyone who you are.”

Little Geoff had simply scowled and replied, “Why couldn’t I be someone else?”

Nowadays he only thinks about it when he happens to glance over his shoulder while pulling on a shirt, catching a glimpse of it in the mirror when he gets out of the shower. He has way more ink now to counter balance it, art that swirls up and down his arms, a pattern of geometric shapes that offsets the black across his shoulder, swallowing up the entire area even though the original tattoo is still blatantly visible.

It’s the ink that inevitably gets him in the most trouble. The stranger’s hands run up and down his spine while their mouths move in perfect rhythm together. His palms are flat against Geoff’s ribs as he turns him over and pushes him with firm force onto the sharp mattress (the springs dig into his stomach, probably cutting into the soft flesh but it’s the last thing on his mind to check) but instead of finishing the job, dominating Geoff in the low light of the setting sun he freezes. The air goes stale, the heat brushing away effortlessly and Geoff shivers.

A finger traces the skin of his shoulder and, not for the first time, Geoff wants to curse his dick for leading him in the wrong direction.

Turns out the guy is a government official, off-duty of course, but his jurisdiction stands and he hauls Geoff into a holding cell before he could even get his pants back on. The guy is nice enough to toss a ratty pair of pants through the bars before disappearing to, no doubt, call the nearest authorities.

Geoff drops his head into his hands and groans.

\---

The cell is cold, very cold. Bare feet on stone is not a combination Geoff wants to try again and the black singlet across his chest isn’t helping much either. The jail cells had been hit in the wars, crumbled just like every other building in the area, but the underground cells were still perfectly structurally sound. He’d heard stories when he was younger, tales of the government locking up rebels in cells just like these and leaving them to starve and dehydrate until they were dead, until they were rotting. And then they would throw in another rebel, leaving the first body behind so the newcomers had no doubt about their fate.

He finds himself kind of hoping that it’s true, that he’ll be left in the cell to decay because the alternative is so much worse. He shudders thinking about what the authorities would do to him if they got him to the main central cities.

He’d carried around a rabbits foot (a real, still partly bloodied rabbits foot) on a string for a while, hoping it would cure his ungodly bad luck but, as a rock hard slice of stale bread lands at his feet and the man smirks from behind the bars, he knows the talisman had no effect.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got anything fresher up there?” he asks dryly, cracking the solid slice in half. The man shakes his head.

“You get what you’re given until the cavalry arrives.”

Geoff snorts, “You need cavalry for a little old boy like me? I’m flattered.”

The man descends the last couple of steps down to the bars and tuts, laughter playing on his lips.

“You really think it’s only you hiding out in this hellhole?”

He leaves before Geoff can ask any more questions.

\---

There are around 30 people crammed into the cells by the time the ‘cavalry’ get’s a city over. He only knows how close they are because the guy who’d dragged him in (now joined by a few of his friends who all bought rifles and stun guns to rival the military) dropped by to give them all progress reports every few hours. They spit on the ground like they own the streets, talk tough and act tougher, and Geoff wants to ram his fist into each of their faces one by one.

Geoff now shares his cell with six people. Which doesn’t sound like much but the cell is five by five and their legs are crossing in the middle. Rosie is the only one to introduce herself, she looks clean and well kept unlike the others that smell like rotten...something, and have skin darkened by UV rays and layers of dirt.

She’s fifteen, a kid born and raised in Alast and one of the only survivors from the one remaining family. She has blonde hair and green eyes and an expression on her face that is way too full of hope and much too happy for the future she’s being handed.  A man with a gruff voice who takes up the corner, pressed against the bars, tells him that she gave herself up willingly before kicking at her ankle in obvious contempt and turning his attention back to the wall beyond the bars.

\---

Geoff can only assume that whoever was coming was travelling by foot because it took them almost five days in total to get near them. Once the numbers got to around 50 (which only took just over two days) the food was too scarce to count for much and the last three days disappear in a daze. Rosie starts crying in the middle of the night, begging them to let her go, that she had made a mistake. All she receives in response is a cry of _shut the fuck up_ from every single cell in unison.

He isn’t going to feel sorry for her.

The day before they are scheduled to leave, Geoff’s cell becomes home to one more person.

One more person who is shouting and screaming bloody murder from the front door all the way to the tunnels, Geoff can hear him clearly, unsurprised to see him being dragged down the stairs by three of their six guards. They’re trying to restrain his kicking legs and flailing arms but, once they reach the stairs, the newcomer only hurts himself with his struggle. He trips on the second step and the guards do nothing to stop his descent as he tumbles and crashes down the stone before coming to rest, breathing heavily, on the floor.

From there it’s barely with the slightest bit of effort that he is yanked up by his hair and tossed into Geoff’s cell, landing with a thud on the crisscrossed legs that pull away quite suddenly, all but Geoff’s. The boy’s cheek is on his knee, one hand laying either side of his shins and he doesn’t have the heart to whip his legs out from under the boy, doesn’t feel the slightest desire to see his face smack on the stone for a second time.

Geoff almost growls at the guards who bark and jeer at the fallen boy, spitting through the bars, dotting the back of the too-still back with foamy globs of saliva.

“Maybe I can keep him,” one says roughly, he has yellow teeth and creases in his forehead that are permanent even when he stops scowling. “I’ve always wanted a pet.”

Geoff thinks he feels the body across his legs shudder, but the boy’s eyes are closed, almost hidden beneath matted auburn curls. One of the men drags a steel drinking mug across the bars as they make their way back to the stairs. Geoff’s fist tightens.

He looks down at his knees. The boy is still motionless, but as the door slams shut at the top of the tunnel one eye cracks open, bloodshot eyeball rolling in its socket and lands on Geoff.

“Are they gone?” he whispers.

Geoff cranes his neck to the door, squinting in the lowlight before confirming with a single nod of his head.

The boy nods for himself, a slight movement against Geoff’s knees and the boy is moving, shifting his hands to lay flat on the floor to give him leverage to push up, “Good, your knees are uncomfortable.”

Blood coats the right side of his face, oozing slowly from an ugly gash across his forehead but he leaps to his feet like the movement is nothing, and Geoff immediately knows that he’s a new capture because he doesn’t seem half starved like the rest of them.  

Their eyes meet and Geoff’s breath vanished from his lungs. Geoff wasn’t a stranger to attractive human beings crossing his path but there’s something about this guy – a twinkle in his bright, hazel eyes, a pink glow on the apples of his cheeks and the freckles across his nose – something that sets Geoff’s heart alight.

“They really think they’re something special,” he grumbles, breaking the contact as he staggered around the cell, taking in the surroundings as he nudges and shift the legs and feet in his way. “Fucking assholes.”

He, somehow, manages to find a small space between Rosie and a dark skinned man who has yet to open his eyes and squeezes in, staring at Geoff across the cell.

 “Thanks for catching me by the way,” he says, pulling one knee up to his chest and leaving the other one to stick out across the floor, nudging against Geoff’s ankle.

“No problem, it’d be a shame to waste that pretty face.”

He smirks and the boy returns it.

“Oh you think I’m pretty, eh?”

He has dimples when he smiles.  His eyes glisten when he waggles his eyebrows comically.

Geoff rolls his eyes and waves him off light-heartedly, “You’re pretty something alright.”

The man with the gruff voice coughs for attention, “Trapped in a cell and you guys are fucking flirting, good job,” he grumbles, folding his arms tighter over his body.

The boy grins, says, “Anything to pass the time, old man,” and starts fucking _whistling._

It’s a tune that Geoff himself recognises from the old tapes that he’s worn down to string in the vans player but he’s never known the name of it so all he can do is join in with his own gentle harmony. Hazel eyes widen in surprise before his whistling rockets in volume and he actually starts dancing (as much as the confined space will allow him to) before he gets an elbow to his ribs from the silent man.

He carries on whistling until the door rocks open and a voice screams, “Whoever that is better shut the fuck up before I rip out your tongue myself!”

The boy – childishly - blows a raspberry back but the whistling stops. Geoff trails off too but they share a smile across the cell that makes Geoff forget, just for a moment, the predicament they’ve found themselves in.

As the boy turns to glance through the bars, Geoff notices something he hadn’t seen yet. The reason this guy has made his way here with the rest of them. The tattoo.

The poor guys mark is a lot more obvious than Geoff’s own, it runs down the length of his neck, starting from just below his ear and disappearing beneath the collar of his faded green shirt. Like Geoff’s it seems to be a mess of squiggles and lines that he had been told meant something in the old language but meant nothing to anyone now so it was just that...squiggles and lines. Maybe this guy knows what it says.

Almost as if he can sense Geoff’s staring, a hand comes up to rub at his neck palm covering the tattoo perfectly just for a moment.

Already Geoff can tell this guy is different (even without the impromptu musical improvisation he could) he was someone that this world needed now. Maybe it’s the way he holds himself like he hasn’t a care in the world, maybe it’s the cheeky-fuck smile that is plastered on his face like he’s had surgery to implant it there, or maybe it’s the way he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a stick of gum, tears it in half and tosses the (slightly smaller) side to Geoff before popping the rest in his mouth.

Maybe it’s a combination of all the above.

“I’m Michael,” he offers, chewing around the gum.  

Geoff nods at the far wall but doesn’t give up his own name back, and this newcomer – Michael – stares at him until he can be bothered to look over, tilting his head just enough to catch a glimpse out of the corner of his eye.

“This is where you say your name,” Michael says slowly, almost like a parent to a child.

“Oh wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Yes, I would that’s why I asked.”

Geoff just laughs.  


	2. Chapter 2

Michael turns out to be the mouthiest little shit that Geoff has ever had the pleasure of meeting.

 

He heckles the guards, yelling insults through the bars. One of them makes the mistake of stripping off his jacket only to be rewarded with catcalls and wolf whistles from the auburn haired boy. He tries to regain control over Michael, threatening him with clenched fists and gritted teeth but Michael only smirks as he saunters over, fucking _grinding_ himself against the bars.

 

“Come and fucking do it,” he goads.

 

The guard clocks him right in the jaw and Geoff catches him as he falls.

 

“Why do you do that?” Geoff asks him in the night before they leave. Everyone else is sleeping or passed out, curled up on the floor too close to each other, whimpering in their slumber. “You know you’re just causing trouble.”

 

Michael peels his eyes open, shrugging as he sits up a little straighter. Earlier, when they’d tossed a bottle of water into the cell, Michael had waited for everyone else to take their sip before using his share to wash the blood out of his eye and the dirt out of the cut across his head. Now the water has dried up in streaks down his face.

 

"What are they gonna do, kill me?" He says dryly and Geoff nods because, yes, that’s exactly what they could do. Michael laughs humorlessly.

 

"With this," he points to the tattoo on his neck, it’s dusted with dirt now and red from scratching the bites that have been left there by the many bugs that inhabit the cells, "I never stood much of a chance. Might as well have some fun in the amount of time I have, right?"

 

He, like so many of the others, has developed a chesty cough from the cold and unsettled dust and hacks wetly into his palm. Geoff isn’t far behind him, but he’s used to the rusty conditions of the world by now and can handle a little more dirt on his lungs.

 

“You know you still haven’t told me your name,” Michael manages to rasp.

 

“I’ll tell you eventually,” Geoff shrugs, ignoring the pout he receives, “think of it as a reason to stop encouraging those assholes to kill you.”

 

“They won’t kill me,” Geoff is thrown by how soft Michael’s voice is suddenly, how different it sounds to everything else he’s heard.

 

“Not yet anyway,” Michael continues, looking at the floor. “I know their type. They want to show off to the superiors, not a bunch of rebels and kids. If they’re gonna do it, it’ll be in the City, where it counts.”

 

Geoff does nothing but shoot him a look that he hopes is comforting enough to encourage him to talk more. There’s something in his words, something that feels long buried, like he needs to get it out and has needed that for a while.

 

“I had a friend a couple of years ago.” _Had_ , Geoff knows where this is going. “He was a mouthy guy from overseas, loud and obnoxious so of course we fit together perfectly.

 

“He made a name for himself standing up for the little people even though he wasn’t much of a fighter himself. When I first met him he had a black eye, split lip and a couple of busted ribs but he grinned like he was on top of the fucking world.”

 

Michael laughs quietly at the memory and blinks back tears which Geoff tactfully pretends not to notice as he wipes the corner of one eye.

 

“I told him not to take on the top dogs, we were in Washington, and no one messes with Washington, except him, my friend the troublemaker.

 

“They hung him,” He says monotone, his eyes narrowing in memory; “It wasn’t even dignified, it was malicious. Hung him from the remains of that big white house, blindfolded and gagged. It was a lesson, nothing more.”

 

“I’m gonna be honest with you, Michael, that only raises more questions about why you would want to make these guys hate you.”

 

“Because even when the asshole was dying, he was _smiling,_ grinning his fucking head off because he’d made his life worth something even with the spiralled tattoo inking up his entire arm.”

 

“We were born to lose,” He says, sliding down the wall until he’s curled up on the floor between two sleeping bodies. “How we lose, that’s the only decision we get to make.”

 

He falls asleep after that, or at least stops responding when Geoff starts asking how the dumbass chewing gum and grinding on cage bars turned into the philosophical wonder talking about the inevitability of death.

 

\---

 

"I'm gonna call you Ted, you look like a Ted to me."

 

Michael’s back on the name thing by the time morning came, chipper and frustrating as the first day he’d shown up. The ‘cavalry’ arrived a few hours ago. They’re upstairs now, talking over who takes who. There are almost 50 rebels down in the cells; they can’t all go into the City.

 

“Ted,” Geoff repeats, raised eyebrows and all.

 

Michael pulls a dangling piece of thread out of the hem of his pants; the whole thing unravels to his ankle. “Yeah, I knew a Ted once. He was a bit of an asshole.”

 

“Gee, thanks.”

 

A shit eating grin consumes Michael’s face as the door to the cells opens to the sound of footsteps, “You’re welcome Ted.”

 

\---

 

To Geoff’s relief he and Michael end up being transported together. He feels like they have a connection, as if they were somehow destined to meet and he doesn’t want to say goodbye to the boy just yet.

 

To his surprise, Michael’s hand clasps his as the guards bring them forward. Geoff’s captor, the one who’d made it into his car, roughly tears them apart for the walk out of the building. He clicks a set of handcuffs around Michael’s wrists (too tight, pinching, but the boy doesn’t even wince) mumbling something about it being for everyone's protection. The cuffs don’t stop him from attaching himself back to Geoff again once the dick with the keys has ventured away far enough.

 

The light outside is blinding, burning straight through Geoff’s retinas and cutting off his vision with white for a good minute before the spots disappear and he realises Michael is giggling at his screwed up face.

 

His instinct to scold is swallowed up by the sight before his eyes. His car, his beautiful vehicular companion that had been everywhere with him, stands pride of place in the torn down courtyard, black with soot and ash and burnt to a crisp. It’s still smoking a little, scraps of photos eaten up by flames scattered like leaves on the ground.

 

“Do you like it? I myself think it looks much better this way.”

 

Geoff immediately wants to ram his fist into the smug face of the man who took everything from him but its Michael’s hand on his wrist that keeps him from leaping at the guy. It surprises him since its _Michael,_ the one who’s already made it clear that he’d like to fuck up everything he can, but once the man passes on, starting to round up the group into a manageable size, Michael’s rubbing Geoff’s wrist with his thumb.

 

“I may be reckless with _my_ life, but I’m not gonna let you give yourself up that easily.”

 

Immediately after, he’s practically skipping as they begin to make their way into the wreckage of Alast, spouting out more comments that begin and end with ‘Ted’

 

The dark skinned man - now known as Alastair - runs out of patience with Michael much faster than Geoff does.

 

“I’d have decked him by now if I could move my arms,” he hisses as they climb over a battered church wall and start to cross the graveyard. When he’d be brought in they’d handcuffed him too tight, cutting through his skin which quickly developed a nasty infection. He’ll be lucky to make it to the City, and if he does, he’ll be an example, like Michael’s friend.

 

Michael continues unperturbed, "Ted, I do say, we are in unfortunate company."

 

“You watch your mouth, boy,” the look that Alastair shoots him is downright dangerous.

 

“What made you so grouchy?” Michael asks with a pout

 

“Being kidnapped, handcuffed to the point of permanent damage, and spending three days stuff in a cell with you.”

 

“But I’m a delight,” Michael retorts with such a deadpan expression that Geoff can’t help but crack with laughter.  


“You’re a bad influence on my sanity, that’s what you are,” Alastair shoots back, grinning sarcastically to mirror the face splitting smile on Michael’s lips.

 

“Did you hear that, Ted? _I’m_ an influence,” Geoff rolls his eyes fondly at the pride in Michael’s voice.

 

“Of course that’s what you’d hear.”

 

\---

 

Michael hangs off the back of Geoff’s shirt like a small child all the way through the main wreckage. The heart of the town looks like a bomb site (and may well be one) with craters and rubble mounds that make walking in a straight line incredibly difficult; more than once he feels the telltale tug of Michael trying to keep upright behind him. Having his hands cuffed together couldn’t be helping much.

 

And yet, still Michael continues with the name game antics that have been tainting the journey from the very beginning. Over the course so far he’s managed to slip the name Ted into every little conversation and snippet he can manage.

 

"Ted-"

 

"Are you ever gonna stop with the Ted shit?" Geoff snaps finally once he just cannot hear that word one more time, an air of annoyance just above his regular level coloring his voice.

 

Michael pulls up short and silent, he smirks knowingly, "Got something against Ted's?"

 

"No, I haven’t got anything-”

 

“I could go with Randy, or maybe Elvis, you’d be a good Elvis,” he imitates a dance move Geoff saw on a ‘blast from the past’ show on TV. “Can you sing, Ted? If you can sing I’ll put you down for Elvis, I know some of his songs.”

 

He straightens out, walking backwards despite the guards telling him to get the fuck back in line.

 

“Hey I could sing them with you! I know some great ones. There’s one about blue shoes, I think.”

 

He’s about to kick up into song and fuck knows how quickly things will go downhill with the men escorting them so he tugs Michael back sharply back into line with him and fixes the riled up guard with a placating glance, “My name's Geoff okay, now can you fucking shut up and try not to fulfil your death wish prophecy?"

 

"Geoff," Michael chews over the word with a smirk. "Lowering my expectations a little, you broke faster than I expected,” he barely stumbles as he’s shoved to the side enough to throw him a little off balance.

 

"Shut up," Geoff bites out half heartedly.

 

"Ted suits you better."

 

" _Shut up_."

\---

 

After hours (or what felt like it) of walking Geoff notices something sticking out of the horizon, silhouetted against the sun. It gets larger as they get closer until he can identify it. It’s a vehicle, a truck if he’s seeing correctly (and his 20/20 vision is rarely wrong) and it’s surrounded by people. People with gun pointed at targets on his back and the back of every single person walking with him.

 

It’s their official transport, of course they can’t walk all the way, he was dumb to play with the idea, and they were all going to be herded into the truck ahead and carried away. What lay beyond that journey...Geoff didn’t even want to think about it.

 

He’d been subtly assessing the group without realising just how far they had travelled. Twenty rebels being escorted by nine guards; three at the front, two at the back, and four strategically placed alongside the rows of three that are making their way, steadily down the street. They, too, have guns and enough firepower to take everyone out at a moment’s notice.

 

The next thing he notes is that the landscape has thinned out. Gone are the crumbled, but still tall, structures and streets paved with rubble. In their place are flattened buildings, reduced to dust. The ground is scarred and black with scorch marks paving the remaining distance between them and the pseudo border patrol.

 

If they do nothing, they’re all as good as dead. If they do _something_ they’re all as good as dead. The clomping of boots against the ground and the steady clicks of guns loading and unloading are the only sounds Geoff can hear. Until suddenly there’s something else.

 

Someone is softly counting down from ten. It takes until 6 for him to realise it’s Michael.

 

His eyes are directed to the floor, his lips making tiny movements as he continues to count. It’s longer than the normal ten seconds, lasting more like fifteen seconds that Geoff can tell. He gets down to three and Geoff shoots him a confused look. Two, and a grin spreads across Michael’s bruised lips.

 

One, and his head snaps up, eyes wild and lip bleeding again as he lets out the most terrifying, inhuman, animalistic screech that Geoff has ever heard. The guards jump, startled by the noise and one of them goes down as Michael rips away from the herd and tackles him, leaping onto his back like a feral creature with his legs wrapped tightly around the man’s waist.

 

He’s got his hands over the man’s face, scratching at the eyes unprotected there, and suddenly everything is an explosion of noise. Almost as if everyone had been waiting for it, the other captives take their opportunity to get their own moves in, kicking and screaming as they fight for control over the guards. Michael goes down underneath a struggling body.

 

Geoff knows it’ll only be moments before the men from the border come to their cohorts rescue, but Michael is struggling without such consideration; the chain linking the handcuffs firmly looped around the guards’ neck, pulling tight and viciously. It barely takes seconds for the man to stop struggling. Hands that had been tugging at the chain, ferociously trying to free his crushed windpipe from the tight grip, dropped limp against the ground and Michael rolled the deadweight off himself, panting with the effort.

 

Geoff snaps out of his daze just long enough to notice the man approaching him from behind. To his left Alastair is flat out on his back, eyes staring, unseeing; Rosie, the only female who made the first cut, is being held down with a knee to her back. The man over his shoulder is one he recognises. It’s the man without a name who locked him up and took away his prized possession, his treasured memories.

 

He feels no remorse as Michael dives past him like a wild animal on all fours, climbing the guard like a tree, riding the bucking movements and ducking away from the flailing limbs as the guy tries to dislodge him.

 

Geoff doesn’t have time to warn the almost feral boy as the men from the truck finally converge on them, guns raised and poised for attack. The first shot takes out a captive on the other side of the courtyard as he tries to run. The second catches the ground at Geoff’s feet and he barely has time to warn for the third but Michael is more than aware of his surroundings.

 

The third bullet misses Michael by an inch, no more no less, hitting the man he’s fighting with right between the eyes. In under a second it’s over for him and he crashes to the ground with a dull thud.

 

Michael lies down with him, not moving, and for a second all Geoff feels is panic.

 

But then his young friend is up on his feet, dodging bullets like some sort of action movie hero, leaping over bodies and injured captives like an athlete.

 

The fight is won in the next minute by the guards, everyone subdued and silent. Geoff and Michael don’t see what happens next because they’re free of the conflict (though just how they managed to get away, Geoff is unsure.)

  
They leave the others behind in the dust, running like madmen, hand in hand, into the distant unknown.

 


End file.
